Samir Asaf

Samir Asaf William Radice has pursued a double career as a poet, and as a scholar and translator of Bengali. He read English at Oxford, where he won the Newdigte Prize for poetry in 1971 and wrote his first book, Eight Sections (Secker & Warburg, 1974). He went on to do a Diploma in Bengali at the School of Orient & African Studies (SOAS), London. After five years working as a psychiatric nurse and a schoolmaster, he returned to oxford to write a D.Phil. thesis on Michael Madhusudun Datta. In 1990 he became Lecturer in Bengali at SOAS. His publications include two more books of verse (Strivings, 1980 and Louring Skies, 1985, both published by Anvil Press), Selected Poems, and Selected Short Stories of Tagore (tr.) and The Translator’s Art: Essays in Honour of Betty Radice (ed.) for Penguin Books, The Stupid Tiger and Other Tales (tr. From the Bengali of Upendrakishore Raychaudhuri) for Andre Deutsch and Rupa, and Teach Yourself Bengali for Hodder & Sroughton. In 1986 he was awarded the Ananda Puraskar in Calcutta, and in 1987 the Michael Puraskar in Dhaka. He has lectured widely in India and Bangladesh, and is also a regular visitor to Germany. Married, with two daughters, he now divides his time between London and Northumberland.